Try to imagine yourself in a situation when you have a lot of recordings to transcribe, but you don’t have enough time to do it individually. Or you have to do a phonetic transcription, but you don’t know all the peculiarities and can’t use the manual transcription software. What would you do in such a situation?
Some people will answer that they can ask for help from friends and colleagues. Some will answer that they can delegate transcription to freelancers. Yet, our recommendation is to turn to professional transcription services. And now we want to share some tips to choose a transcription service wisely.
Ask About the Software and Hardware
A trustworthy company has nothing to hide. Thus, if you contact the support team and ask to tell more about their approaches and programs, they will tell you immediately. We checked this thing with a lot of transcribing companies. For example, Transcriberry provided us with photos and videos of their office. Moreover, they shared some general information about the software they use to provide their services. Finally, they showed photos of their hardware. Thus, we know that we can turn to this company when we need transcription services.
A reliable transcribing company should have the following:
- legal automated transcription software;
- legal manual transcription software;
- high-quality headspeakers;
- high-quality loudspeakers;
- project managing software.
This is not a full list. However, these things are obligatory for every transcription company. If you ask a certain platform to provide such information and they don’t share anything, try to avoid their services.
Check The Range of Services
Usually, reliable transcription companies have all the necessary software and qualified transcribers. In this case, they can provide any kind of help. For example, Transcriberry can ensure you with:
- manual transcription;
- automatic transcription;
- creating subtitles for foreign languages.
What is more important, professional human transcribers can provide you with very urgent help regardless of the type of service. Thus, if the company claims that it can help you with any kind of recording, you should note it.
Check the Prices
You might understand this, but academic transcription usually is not very difficult. The biggest problem is the size of the record. Thus, the average price shouldn’t be very high. Yet, at the same time, there is no company that can provide you with an academic transcription service for free.
So, checking prices, you have to compare some companies. The average price for English academic transcription services nowadays is about $1.25 per minute. If you need a phonetic transcription, the price can be about $2-2.5 per minute.
If you see that a company sets a lower price, try to avoid it. They can provide you with a transcription. Yet, the final result will be of bad quality, so you will have to revise everything individually.
At the same time, if the company sets a very high price for transcribing audio to text online, you definitely have to avoid them. Firstly, such companies are SCAM very often. Their main purpose is to get as much money as they can within a short period. Nonetheless, they can be trustworthy. Still, you don’t have to overpay for transcription services.
Check Online Reputation
This is an obligatory part when choosing academic transcription services. Actually, feedback is the best factor to define whether the company is good or not. Thus, you have to surf through several websites and check clients’ testimonials about the company you want to choose.
Yet be attentive to the content itself. There are a lot of fake reviews to create a positive (or even negative) online reputation for certain companies. In most cases, a real company with real reviews will have both laconic and detailed reviews.
Fake comments are usually very laconic or don’t provide the details of the order (like the purpose of transcription, deadlines, and so on). Moreover, in real comments, people usually claim the communication process. If you don’t see any of these factors or even can’t find anything about the transcription company online, you should avoid it.
Check Legal Information
This thing won’t help you to understand the quality of transcription services. Nonetheless, you will understand whether the company is real or fake. Thus, you have to check the following data:
- registration;
- terms of use;
- information about the owner;
- privacy policy;
- payment provider data.
A trustworthy company is obliged to inform clients about all of these things. Thus, you can easily contact support agents and ask them to provide links or screenshots of documents. If they don’t want to share anything, most possibly the company is a scam.
Mind that you have to always check legal information. You can even miss some testimonials of, for example, information about software. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t miss any legal data about the company. If you cooperate with a real company and won’t be satisfied, you can always ask for money-back. Yet you can’t activate such an option if you cooperate with a fake company.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things you have to check while choosing academic transcription services online. If you don’t want to waste your money, you would rather spend more time on company analysis. Otherwise, you will have to cope with stress. We recommend turning to Transcriberry since we ask this company for help whenever we need transcription.
Nonetheless, you can choose any other company on the Web. Just mind that you have to always check legal information and testimonials. The more information you have about the company, the more guarantees that you will have a positive result or your academic transcription.
